The Rise of the Technocrat – The Redistribution of Power in the Digital Age

by

Mariam Bregvadze

CyJurII Scholar

on 1 November 2025 

I. Introduction 

 As the Industrial Revolution transformed social structures, decisions are increasingly being made not in public debate or partisan competition, but through the efforts of other experts, data scientists, and engineers. This process is often called the rise of the technocrat – a form of governance based on knowledge, efficiency, and computational optimization, as opposed to confrontation or normativity. 

 Technocratic thinking is neither new nor uniform. However, in the modern digital age, it is given a new foundation: artificial intelligence, big data, and algorithmic governance by a new architecture of politics, where “expertise” often replaces democratic representation. At the same time, a central research question arises: 

 • How does expert-led governance change power structures in the digital age? 

 This question is relevant not only for political theory, but also for real governance practices from the institutions of the European Union to private technology giants that are themselves influencing the behavior and choices of citizens. 

 II. Conceptual framework: What is technocracy? 

 The idea of technocracy arose at the beginning of the 20th century, when scientific management and industrial planning gave rise to a new model of governance: “science instead of politics.” Daniel Bell (1973) drew attention to the fact that in post-industrial society, attention is known and is known as the main source of economic and political power. 

Frank Fisher (1990) argues that technocracy is a form of governance in which the authority of knowledge and expertise replaces traditional sources of democratic legitimacy. Jeffrey Friedman (2019) argues that technocracy abandons politics in favor of “depoliticized management,” where decisions are justified not by the dimensions of “evidence” but by  “evidence.” This limitation is a new face in the neoliberal era when it is efficient, competitive, and datadriven. Technocracy in this context fits neoliberal ideas, as it also relies on decision-making mechanisms that are unprotected and unable to involve citizens. 

 III. Technocracy in Practice: Crisis Management to Digital Control 

 The practical form of technocracy is particularly visible in times of crisis. The Eurozone Bank, the Central Bank of the European Union and the European Commission make significant cuts without democratic deliberation “skills-maintaining” policies prepared by economic experts determine the fate of national budgets. This is evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public policy was based on epidemiological modeling and data analytics, often bypassing political control mechanisms. 

 IV. Technocracy and Democracy: A Tense Relationship 

 Technocracy is often seen as a political alternative to democracy. Peter Mays’s “Ruling the Void” argues that the decline of party politics has created a space where experts and institutional elites fill the void left by democracy. According to Yannis Papadopoulos, this is where citizens are unable to participate in decision-making. This process is countered by the rise of populist movements that seek to reclaim the “voice of the people” from expert rule. Corporations, technocracy, and democracy are in a constant state of tension—the former based on the authority of knowledge and efficiency, the latter on the consent of the people. But in the digital age, this tension takes on a new form. 

 V. Digital Technocracy: Algorithmic Authority and AI-Driven Governance 

 In the digital age, technocracy is no longer limited to economists and engineers—it is being extended to algorithmic governance. Algorithms will make decisions that have a lasting impact on citizens’ behavior, scores, credibility, or critical objects. According to Foucault’s theory of governance, power operates not only from the top down, but also through micro-mechanisms, which is precisely the structure of digital surveillance. Shoshana Zuboff’s “Surveillance Capitalism” describes how data collection has become an instrument of economic and political control. 

 Examples of algorithmic technocracy include: 

 1. Google’s urban planning (Sidewalk Toronto) - where decisions were made by slaves, based on models of beatings, not on citizen participation. 

 2. COVID-19 surveillance applications - new forms of state control in the name of 

“Public health”. 

 3. China’s social credit system - an extreme version of technocratic governance, where citizen behavior is assessed based on data. 

 VI. The global redistribution of power: from nation-states to technocratic networks 

 In the era of global governance, technocracy is no longer just a national phenomenon. The IMF, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the European Central Bank are creating global technocratic networks where decisions are made not by elected representatives, but by specialists. At the same time, technological giants Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Palantir have taken on positions as influential as traditional states. They control the data, infrastructure, and platforms that determine the rules of public life. The theories of Rosenau, Schacke, and Chesterman point to the transformation of governance from “government to governance” from the state to multi-centered networks of governance. In these networks, power is diffuse, but democratic control is weak. 

 VII. Conclusion 

 The digital transformation of technocracy is changing political agency and the distribution of responsibility. Politics has increasingly become a process of data management, and citizenship has become a consumer statistic. In conclusion, two main questions remain: 

 1. Can technocracy coexist with democracy in the long term? 

 2. Who controls experts and algorithms when they themselves have become the architects of control? 

 The answers to these questions will determine not only the future of governance but also the survival of democracy in an era where power is increasingly shifting from people to codes and data.  

References: 

• Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 45. 

• Eri Bertsou and Daniele Caramani, The Technocratic Challenge to Democracy (London: Routledge, 2020), 18. 

• Anders Esmark, “The New Technocracy: Understanding Technocratic Governance in the 21st Century,” Policy Studies 41, no. 2 (2020): 150. 

• Frank Fischer, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990), 62. 

• Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 92. 

• Jeffrey Friedman, Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 77. 

• World Health Organization, Ethical Considerations for Digital Contact Tracing in the Context of COVID-19 (Geneva: WHO, 2020), 7. 

• International Monetary Fund (IMF), Good Governance and the Role of Expertise in Global Financial Stability, IMF Working Paper No. 19/45 (Washington, DC: IMF, 2019), 3.